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Paul Ryan campaigning as Mini-Mitt

Critics believe the campaign has been stuck in a pre-Ryan messaging rut. | AP Photo

When they part company again, Kristol said, Ryan could appear on stage with, say, Gov. Chris Christie, and some of the party’s younger reformers could take the stage with Romney.

If Ryan has proven to be the anti-Palin in terms of his campaign style — aw-shucks demeanor combined with language about obligation to future generations attracts fewer of the masses than the woman who talked about hunting game in Alaska — he has also been that way in terms of drama. Palin became a major national story for some good reasons, but some bad ones as well.

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The Romney campaign early on, before a running mate was ever chosen, selected the GOP nominee’s adviser, Dan Senor, to travel on the plane with the eventual pick out of caution from what happened four years ago. There wasn’t unanimity in Romney’s circle about selecting Ryan, but most accepted the choice quickly.

There are always two separate VP and presidential bubbles and making them interact well is challenging. But people involved in the Romney and Ryan effort insisted coordination has gone smoothly.

“There is always integrating issues between convention and VP selection but I have found this transition exponentially more seamless than past ones,” said Mary Matalin, the Republican strategist and former Dick Cheney adviser who has worked with Ryan. “Ryan has given and will keep giving big and deep speeches; unlike some previous campaigns where the VP was dispatched to the hinterlands, Ryan is [an] important issue, cohort and geography asset.”

The only problem anyone could point to between the two teams involved some tension around Ryan’s convention speech, according to several sources.

The initial draft was adjusted for length and to include more of a pro-Romney argument as opposed to too much anti-Obama language.

With the campaign entering the final stretch, now is the time for Ryan to be used forcefully, some of Ryan’s colleagues said.

Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) said: “What’s the use of winning by saying I’m not the other person. He’s an ideas guy, you know what you’re getting when you get him. The rumors of his demise because we picked the author of the budget and Medicare reforms, to paraphrase Mark Twain, have been exaggerated. We may or may not have issues going into November but Paul Ryan is not one of them.”

He added, “I don’t think you can use him enough. I think he’s the best asset our party has. Period.”

Rep. Rob Woodall (R-Ga.), who serves on the Budget Committee with Ryan, said the congressman brings a specific quality to the race.

“Paul brings an earnestness to the ticket that you don’t see on either side of the aisle,” he said. “He never wanted to be speaker or campaign champion, he wanted to be the guy who solved the problems [that] needed to be solved. If it meant he’d go down in flames, he’d pay that price.”

Who is surprised by this? This is a make-believe news story. Ryan is becoming Romney, doing whatever he thinks it takes at the moment to grease the skids for his political power-play. Ryan's "principles" apparently are excess baggage, not commitments....he has tossed them overboard. Read more on my blog: Barley Literate by Rickhttp://barleyliterate.blogspot...

It’s appropriate for Ryan to be ‘Mini-Mitt’, because they believe the same things and have the same goals:

1. Romney/Ryan want to cut, then destroy, Social Security

2. Romney/Ryan want to cut, then destroy, Medicare

3. Romney/Ryan want to re-start the wars in the Middle East

4. Romney/Ryan want to cut taxes for 'financiers', 'bankers', 'investors' - any one who does not earn a wage, but rips off others through tax and regulatory manipulation and legislative slight-of-hand

5. Romney/Ryan want to drive our nation's government into hock, while giving corporations and the wealthiest a free ride

6. Romney/Ryan want to continue to pass swiss-cheese legislation with enough holes to allow off-shore paper 'corporations' to receive tax breaks, while regular Americans cant even afford to send their kids to college.

7. Romney/Ryan want to 'de-regulate', so the public has to pick up the tab for workers hurt on the job, for the environment polluted by industrial waste, but wants to keep 'regulations' that allow for monopolistic practices and archaic costly 'patents' that drive up prices for consumers.

8. Romney/Ryan want to spend more and more on 'defense', though America already spends as much on 'defense' as all other nations of the world combined.

Romney and Ryan need to release the SPECIFICS on how they plan on implementing and funding their policies.

Hearing Romney and his campaign statements, they have internal polling that if they release or talk about the specific of his or Ryan's plan then they will lose some Republican voters and many independents.

Most independents that I talk to are not going to vote for Romney and Ryan due to their policies and funding of those policies. Romney is not losing cause he is a flawed. He is losing cause of what the impact may be from the Romney and Ryan plan.

The press and the right are going to have to come to terms with this basic reality.